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Hanging up the duyan

A while back, I blogged about my desire for a traditional Filipino duyan, or hanging bassinet, for the baby. My mom presented me with one last Christmas, and after lots of plastic cling wrap and two plane rides, our duyan arrived safely in Amsterdam.

Plain rattan didn’t quite go with our baby room’s color scheme, so Marlon and I decided to give the traditional duyan a bit of a modern makeover. Inspired by the ombre trend, Marlon and I used leftover paint from our baby room bookshelves to create a gradient effect. We applied three shades of powdery pink, starting with the lightest shade then and blending them as we went along.

After revamping the duyan, we had to find a place for it. I wanted Tala to sleep in our room in the early months, but we didn’t have enough space to hang the duyan by the bed.

Since we had found a great deal on a second-hand Stokke Sleepi, Marlon and I decided to make that her main crib and install the duyan on the balcony instead. Luckily, our apartment’s previous owners used to hang a hammock on the balcony, and they’d left a few heavy-duty hooks in the ceiling. Marlon tapped into his inner Boy Scout to rig the rope and secure it with a few well-placed knots…

… and voila! One fully functional duyan, ready for gentle breezes and sunny days.

With the arrival of a long-delayed spring, we’re finally getting to use the duyan. We had great sunny weather last weekend, so we put the mattress and beddings from her Stokke crib in it and put her down for a nap while we enjoyed our first al fresco lunch of the season.

So many of my baby essentials are from home. The makeshift sun shade is one of our dozens of bird’s eye cloth diapers from Landmark, and it’s secured with pastel bull clips from National Bookstore. This is a Filipino baby, after all!

Now that we’ve managed to import and install a traditional Filipino duyan, I’d love to get more use out of it. If only it was as easy to bring over some Filipino sunshine!

2 Comments
Posted on April 19, 2013
Category: Creative Projects, House & Spouse · Labels: baby, DIY, duyan, furniture, home, projects, Tala

Before & after: Ikea Brimnes bed

Moving into a smaller apartment with less closet space, Marlon and I agreed that under-bed storage was a must. We looked at a couple of (mostly expensive) options until we settled on the affordable Ikea Brimnes bed, which has clean lines and huge drawers underneath.

Because our bedroom has limited space, we also bought the Brimnes headboard, which features a ledge and hidden shelving that we could use in place of bedside tables.

Confession: I wasn’t totally onboard with this purchase. I agreed the storage was practical, but I had an irrational, possibly hormonally-fueled distaste for those two rectangles on the headboard and footboard. “Can we please do something to cover them up?” I grumbled as we paid for our purchases at Ikea. “Okay,” Marlon said. Smart man—never disagree with a pregnant woman.

With Little Mango on the way, neither Marlon and I were in the mood for elaborate DIYs. Our solution? Wallpaper!

Check out our quick fix and finishing touches, after the jump!

[Read more...]

12 Comments
Posted on March 14, 2013
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: DIY, furniture, home, projects

Knit it: Chunky ribbed cowl

This time last year, I was running around like a headless chicken. If I wasn’t traveling, I had some kind of class or activity on an almost-daily basis: watercolor, sewing, Dutch, a blogging e-course. This autumn, I’ve made a conscious decision to cut down on activity and slow down. With a baby on the horizon, I know our quiet nights and lazy weekends at home are numbered, and I want to enjoy them while they last.

So, while Marlon putters around the kitchen or bonds with his Playstation after work, I blog, surf, read… or knit. One of the easy knitting projects I finished this week is a chunky ribbed cowl in electric blue alpaca wool, based on this pattern from Knit & Bake.

To be honest, it was supposed to be for me, but it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to! I’m still a knitting newbie, so I’m awful at estimating gauge (yarn weight vs needle size) and all that. In fact, if you look closely, it’s pretty hairy from all the times I found myself stuck and bewildered, and just had to unpick and redo it.

Thankfully, Marlon was happy to have it. He says it’s soft and cozy, and keeps the wind out while he’s cycling. Yay for low-maintenance husbands!

2 Comments
Posted on October 14, 2012
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: fall, knitting, Marlon, projects

Who wore it better?

After knitting a very long scarf that I didn’t like very much, I finally completed a knitting project that I actually like. I found a pattern for this knit headband/neck warmer on Pinterest and thought it would be a nice way to learn new techniques, like increasing and decreasing stitches. It’s not perfect, but it’s been getting a lot of use, and I’m happy with the color.

Now, my question is: who wore it better? Me or Rogue?

P.S. I’m frowning because I attempted to take this in a narrow cobblestoned alley that suddenly turned into a wind tunnel. Narrow alleys here have a way of doing that in the winter.

4 Comments
Posted on February 10, 2012
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: knitting, projects, Rogue, winter

MangoJuiced: Style steals from an Istanbul apartment

I stayed in this Istanbul apartment last October—and I loved it so much, I “stole” something to take home with me. Can you guess what it is?

Go style stealing with me in this week’s post on MangoJuiced. And leave a comment to congratulate me on my newfound sewing skills. Consider that your hint!

MangoJuiced is a webzine for anything and everything that interests women—from fashion and family, to pop culture and beauty, to travel and lifestyle. Follow MangoJuiced on Twitter and Facebook… and don’t forget to check back in for a new post from me every week!

Comment?
Posted on January 24, 2012
Category: Creative Projects, Wanderlust · Labels: home, Istanbul, MangoJuiced, projects, sewing, Turkey

Christmas chandelier

Remember the wineglass chandelier that we got in April?

It recently became the target of my Christmas decorating frenzy. I had something in mind, but before I could put my idea to work, all the wineglasses had to come off. Yes, all 36 of them.

While the glasses received their first wash in months, I strung up a few new ornaments: a set of four very shiny silver ones from Ikea, as well as some fresh picks from De Bijenkorf. All of the ornaments I chose were either silver, gold, transparent or some kind of combination of the three. All the better to let through, or reflect, the light from the central bulb.

Marlon and I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures while working. Shiny things are just too much fun to play with.

After throwing in a few of our pre-loved ornaments to fill in the gaps, and draping some faux greens over the top, our chandelier revamp was complete.

Voila! Presenting our Christmas chandelier.

Just looking at it all lit up in the evening gives me the warm-and-fuzzies.

It’s just as pretty in the daytime.

I’ll be sad to take it down after the holidays. But for now, I’ll enjoy it as much as I can.

2 Comments
Posted on December 16, 2011
Category: Creative Projects, House & Spouse · Labels: Christmas, home, inspired, projects

Watercolor Christmas cards

Success! I’ve mailed out my Christmas cards for the year. Yes, I’m one of those people that still sends out Christmas cards via snail mail. It’s usually a struggle to get them out on time, but this year I managed my to do it!

I knew I wanted to make my own cards this year. And I knew I wanted to combine watercolors with hand lettering. So I set out my watercolors, tore out a few pages from my watercolor sketch pad, and played around with them one rainy afternoon. These were some of the cards I came up with. Apologies for the bad lighting, Amsterdam has been immersed in this weak gray gloom all week.

Yes, the designs are pretty simple and it’s a very small batch of cards (plus a couple that I didn’t photograph). But each one is unique and is made with love and care. Which one do you like best?

Oh, and I also made the envelopes myself, as all the cards are odd sizes. I used this festive Japanese washi tape with polka dots (my current obsession) to seal the envelopes.

And now my cards are winging their way to Belgium, the UK and Singapore. Fly swift, my pretties, and spread the Christmas cheer!

7 Comments
Posted on December 14, 2011
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: Christmas, projects, watercolor

Coriander & co.

Back in Singapore, our condo unit had a balcony with a tiny box filled with soil. “Look, sweetie! We can plant an herb garden!” I sighed with all the dewy-eyed rapturousness of a new wife. In the three years we lived in that condo, you think we ever got around to doing it? Hah.

It turns out all I needed to bring this long-slumbering herb garden fantasy to life was… spring. Just as a deadline spurs a procrastinator into action, the thought of “I can only grow things outside until September!” provided the impetus to finally start cracking my green thumb…

Which started out looking a lot like a black thumb. The first few pots of herbs I bought died a fiery death, sun-dried to a McCormicky crisp during the week that we were away in Portugal. Burned by that experience, I resolved to try a new, two-pronged approach with the replacements I bought.

Part one consisted of repotting the herbs in bigger pots. Marlon’s logic: bigger pots, more soil, longer to dry out. The afternoon before we left for Oslo, he biked to the nearest Blokker (a Dutch chain with very affordable basic household items) and came back with these stainless steel metal window boxes.

I did the replanting out on the balcony. It was nice to get my hands dirty, literally. I used to love watering the garden and digging up weeds when I was a kid. I haven’t felt soil between my fingers in ages.

Part two of my survival strategy consisted of showing my herbs some love: by naming them and talking to them. (Alert, cuckoo gardening lola in the making!) I was toying between Fernando Cilantro and Alexander Coriander for the (duh) coriander, but ended up going with Alexander. (I think it was influenced by Patrick’s wife giving birth that weekend in Athens and naming the baby Alexandros.)

Paisley Parsley was christened by Therese on Twitter, and appealed to my deep and abiding love for paisley. Marlon later countered that we could have gone with Bob Parsley instead and given Alexander a gay Rasta boyfriend. It’s hard to admit I dropped the ball on this one.

I made up for it, though, by bringing Rosemary Gil into the world. A seriously Pinoy pop culture-deprived Marlon did not get the significance of this name. The real Rosemarie Gil won my eternal devotion as the haughty evil stepmother in the 80s campfest, Nympha, where Alma Moreno played… you guessed it, a nympho.

A peek at her IMDB profile reveals a slew of classics such as Bata Pa Si Sabel, Burlesk Queen, Bagets and Nardong Putik mingling with such dazzlingly campy titles as Bruka: Queen of Evil, Night of the Cobra Woman, and Fight Batman Fight! Plus, she played (ting alert!) Tingting Cojuangco in a TV miniseries. How could I not want my rosemary to take after this fabulous woman?

Beside the divine Miss Gil is the only plant that I have ever tried to grow from seed. A species that’s… uh, abundant in Amsterdam, it has yet to be named but has already begun to sprout. My black thumb might just turn out to be green after all.

5 Comments
Posted on May 23, 2011
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: home, projects, spring

School days

I’ve been looking for art to hang alongside the two Indian miniature paintings that Marlon and I bought on our honeymoon in Rajasthan. We’ve already put up most of our art, and none of them seemed to go with those two paintings in particular, either in style or in theme.

Then I realized I had just the thing to go with the Indian miniatures: a family album of old photographs of India from the 1950s and 1960s. I first discovered this album in my mom’s drawer back in high school. It was packed with some things of my dad’s, like old passports. I’m guessing either he owned it or my Dima, his mother, kept it for him as a chronicle of his school days.

A little bit about my dad: he was named Amitabha, but known to family and friends as Gandhi because he was born on the date of Gandhi’s death. (Nicknames are a big thing in Bengali culture.) At the age of 5, he won a huge regional quiz contest where the prize was a coveted scholarship to a British-run boarding school in the Himalayas, where India’s elite sent their children to study.

This was a major deal. It made him something of a golden boy among his clan, the best and brightest, the family’s pride. This sort of hero status surrounded him his whole life and extended to my mom, sister and me. I really feel it whenever I go to Calcutta; as Gandhi’s daughter, I get the star treatment. My dad’s boarding school education led to a scholarship at AIM, and eventually to a career in trading, banking and finance in Hong Kong and Manila, then the financial capitals of Asia.

Not bad for a young boy from a simple family from Calcutta. Dima was always so proud of him. Here is Dima in her younger days. Something about this photo reminds me of my sister.

Out of all the photos in the album, it was the glimpses of my dad’s boarding school life in 1950s India that really captivated me.

I think my dad’s the one on the top left, in the singlet and sailor hat.

Second row, second from left. I’ve had that same expression in class pictures.

Swimming lesson.

Military training. We had that too.

School dance. Already happening in India in the 1950s,

but forbidden in my high school in the 1990s. WTF.

Sometime close to graduation, I’m guessing. My dad is seated, on the right.

There are also some beautiful vignettes of India. These pictures are so small and delicate—some are just half the size of my iPhone. This is one of the larger, sharper ones.

I’ve decided that my new project will be to hunt for vintage frames for my favorite photos from this album. It will be hard to choose just a few… I might end up filling an entire wall!

11 Comments
Posted on April 6, 2011
Category: Creative Projects · Labels: family, India, paper, projects, vintage

Deck the hall

… with Indian fabric, falalala lala lala!

Marlon has the habit of coming home and emptying his pockets of coins, keys and wadded-up receipts… and they end up everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Back in our Singapore condo, I’d come across coins in the bathroom, in the closet, on the kitchen counter, floor, nightstand, bookshelf, coffee tables, dining table, you name it. I went ballistic each time I found a coin. I tried putting a specially designated canister in different locations to catch them, observing where he was most likely to empty his pockets, asking him where it was most convenient for him, to no avail.

And so I became determined to win the war against the coins and install a catch-all solution in our new home. It came in the form of a many-drawered vintage steel cabinet, from my vintage/industrial mecca Spoor 38. The cabinet had a lovely patina (a.k.a. rust), but when we moved it into the hallway it looked lost and bare.

Then I remembered I bought some pretty paisley fabric during our honeymoon in Rajasthan. (In case you didn’t know, I’m the biggest sucker for anything with a paisley print.) It had been sitting, unused, folded quietly in a box for the last three years, waiting for its moment.

When I told my mom about this, by the way, she cackled with a triumph that was at least 24 years in the making. “See? See? Now you understand!” she cried with glee. She used to shop for fabric all the time when I was a kid, and I hated it. With a passion. Even my biggest displays of brattiness and my constant whining accusations of “You don’t even use them!” could never dissuade her from this habit. And I agreed that, yes, now I understood. (Don’t you just get the feeling sometimes that we are all turning into our mothers?)

Anyway, with several pieces of wood molding from the hardware store, some gold paint, a few nails, generous amounts of wood putty, and my trusty staple gun, Marlon and I made a “framed wallpaper” backdrop for the steel cabinet in the hallway.

And like my dining chairs and their DIY cushions, the print picks up the little bits of rust and wear on the cabinet while complementing the metal in a way that I really like.